The town of Hagi sits on the Sea of Japan with mountains at its back, none of them much over four hundred meters, and almost no flat land in between. Rice for the local sake therefore comes from inland valleys such as Mutsumi and Fukue, terraced fields worked for generations. The brewing water passes through volcanic rock and arrives low in minerals. Brewers call it soft.

That softness shows up in the glass. The rice flavor arrives first, round and a little sweet, and then an acidity moves through it and clears everything away. Official descriptions reach for banana, melon, lychee, green bamboo. I read that list and assumed someone in a marketing office had been handed a thesaurus and told to fill a page.

Then I poured a glass and put my nose to it. The fruit was there, faint but unmistakable, and behind it something green that I would not have named on my own. I do not know whether I found the smell or the words found it for me. Either way the description turned out to be closer to the truth than my suspicion of it.

On the thirtieth of March, 2021, sake from this area was granted a geographical indication by the national tax agency. Six breweries hold the right to use the name, four in Hagi and two in the town of Abu. It was the eighth such designation for sake in the country. The name is now a boundary as much as a label.